Everything I Needed To Know About Life
by dorian dark
Summary: ...I learned from Rodgers and Hammerstein. Scenes and memories from Remus Lupin's life. His loves, losses...and Sirius in a dress. With dashes of RLSB, RLSS, RLNT from time to time.
1. I Whistle A Happy Tune

AN: Ok, so I found an old poster I used to have on my wall with various StarWars quotes on with the heading 'Everything I Needed To Know About Life I Learned From Star Wars', and THEN I found an old Bryn Terfel CD of various show tunes, and I got thinking (as I am wont to do), and then I came up with this: a collection of vaguely chronological scenes and memories from Lupin's life, all inspired by songs from shows by Rodgers and Hammerstein. In this instalment, we explore his childhood a little, up to the time he sets off for Hogwarts. Hope you enjoy! dorian dark xx

Disclaimer: this goes for the rest of the fic: NOT MINE.

Dedication: this fic is for Lady Bracknell, whose stories make me very, very happy. This may not be your cup of tea, ma'am, but I thought a bit of appreciation wouldn't go amiss. dd xx

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**Everything I Needed To Know About Life (I Learned From Rodgers and Hammerstein)**

I.

_Whenever I feel afraid_

_I hold my head erect_

_And whistle a happy tune,_

_So no one will suspect I'm afraid – 'The King and I' _

Even before I was bitten, we were never an affluent family. I had only been to the seaside once in the years we might deem my childhood – before Hogwarts, before regeneration.

I remember we drove to Barmouth with the windows rolled down and salty, tangy breezes promising unreachable horizons and utter, unimaginable bliss. I was not disappointed. I have never forgotten the incredible smell of hot sand, the aged smoothness of sun-bleached beach huts, and the glorious sound of my mother's squealing as she ran with me, my little feet slapping wetly in the surf, churning, foamy spray soaking our thighs and bellies. They are the only holiday memories I have, and so I cherish them all the more closely.

Christmas was similarly economical. Mother made crackers from old parcel paper stamped with cut potato shapes, and little snippets of ribbon, and filled them with sugar mice and polished Sickles. I'd never heard of stockings and turkeys and mulled wine – naturally, Sirius and James, incredulous at my general ignorance, took the opportunity to fabricate various 'well-known traditions' which all ordinary families observed at Yuletide. I saw through the 'New Year Llama' straight away, but they nearly had me convinced with the 'Homage to a Fallen Turkey' poem. Anyway, I knew their typical teasing hid a shocked pity for my deprived youth, and I wished I could spend the holidays at home.

Though Christmases at Hogwarts were extra-ordinary, opulent affairs I equate in my mind with extreme gluttony and vicious hangovers, I remember my childhood celebrations equally fondly. My father would save every penny from his measly pay-packet, go without a can of his favourite beer on Saturdays running up to Christmas, sell some of his clothes, or a set of cufflinks for formal dinners he was never invited to, and buy my mother her annual music record.

There was something infinitely comforting about the routine of it all; the three of us would crowd round the fire wearing flimsy paper hats, and quiver with excitement, wondering which record Father had found this time. My mother's eyes would shine with unbridled love as she unwrapped the flat, square parcel, her fingers trembling visibly.

'Oh, _John_,' she would breathe softly, running a hand over the glossy cover, and hold it up for the whole family to admire. 'Look, Remus, look what your father got for me, aren't I a lucky girly?'

Her smiles, corny though it sounds, were the best present I could ever have received, and even then, when I had quite enough troubles of my own to be getting on with, I realised that the love my parents shared was truly exceptional. They would put the record on, and dance slowly with their arms round each other to the scratchy music. It was like the movies, I thought, and I was entranced, and utterly contented.

Three years after I was bitten, my family was plummeting further into destitution, plagued by stigma and by mounting debts. I was nine, and Mother's face was prematurely lined, and more than once I had heard Father stifle an unwilling sob in the dead of night.

My parents sold the car, and my mother pawned her ancestral pearls, and they sent me to a sanatorium in Sweden for a week one Easter. I hated it. The walls were white, and the smell of death and chloroform lingered everywhere. The nurses were brusque and business-like, and I could not understand a word they said. I wet the bed, and they hit me. Stern Healers poked my thin, pale chest and looked into my eyes, their hot breath repugnant on my cheek. I was subjected to a daily round of hideous potions, injections and tests, and the transformation at the end of the week was just as horrible, just as painful as before.

I returned to England with my little suitcase, looking like a Muggle evacuee, weeping with happiness to see my parents again, not blaming them one iota for having sent me away in the first place.

'Darling!' My mother was thinner, and pale with prolonged worry. Father put a hand gingerly on her shoulder and stroked her comfortingly, then ruffled my hair and said jauntily, 'how's my brave traveller, then?' He was good at putting on a brave face, my father. He rarely let me see how much it hurt him.

We had to walk from the train station to our little terraced house, through potholed, muddy streets, in the English gloom, me holding fast to my mother's gloved hand. The house was darker than I remembered, colder somehow, and there were strange shadows lingering in corners I had never noticed before. Some of the ornaments were gone from the mantelpiece – the little china mice I had played with as a toddler, lining them up in rows and teaching them about 2 + 2, or slotting them into my toy fire engine and rushing off to rescue the porcelain ballerina, who was trapped on top of the coffee table. She was gone too, with her fragile, splayed skirts and elegant white arms.

My mother and father exchanged glances at my silence and apprehension.

'Well, Remus, we'd better celebrate our big boy coming back from his big adventure, hadn't we?' Father said cheerily. Mother smiled tightly, her eyes sparkling with helpless tears.

I nodded mutely. Maybe Father would let me have a little glass of wine, now I'd been away all by myself. Or we could walk to the sweetshop in the village and he'd let me pick a whole Sickle's worth of sweets. But Father was pulling a flat parcel down from the shelf, and handing it to me with a meaningful look, and Mother was smiling happily now through her tears.

I remained silent and turned the parcel over and over, examining the neat Spellotape holding it together, feeling the weight of it in my hands. My father had written _to our brave boy, from Mother and Father_ on one corner of the newspaper wrapping. I bit my lip.

'Is this for me?' I whispered incredulously.

'Well, how many other brave boys are there in this house?' Mother demanded, squatting down beside me and touching my face lightly. 'Go on, Remus, open your present.'

Slowly, I slid my finger under the flap at the end and ripped the Spellotape open. The newspaper unfolded like a parcel of greasy fish and chips, and I could feel my little childish heart thundering uncontrollably.

The record was second-hand, the corners of the cover were soft and worn with age, and the thin spine was faded where it had lain on a shelf in the sun, but it was mine. _The Rodgers and Hammerstein Collection, _I read slowly, tracing the raised red lettering reverently with a finger. _Well-loved classics from all the shows_, it said underneath. I looked up at my parents, and saw their proud, bittersweet smiles, and the horror of the sanatorium, and the monthly dread of the moon fell away as I ran to embrace them.

I played that record every chance I got, while helping my mother to iron, while writing earnest little stories on scraps of paper, complete with angular crayoned drawings. Mother would watch me fondly, tongue stuck out as I concentrated, humming subconsciously under my breath. I would sing the lyrics as I ran to town to pick up some fish, or while I sat on the edge of the canal fishing with a piece of string and a rusty hook.

Then Father died. My most abiding memory of that awful time is the overwhelming silence of the house, the vacant, cold expression on Mother's face as she sat motionless in her armchair. I crept about the house, trying to remember Father's face, and the warmth of his laugh, and the rush of excitement as he swung me up above his head and tickled me mercilessly. I wanted to ask Mother – why the Healers hadn't been able to do anything, whether it was naughty that I couldn't cry, what would happen to us now. But the utterly misery of her forlorn figure in that armchair stopped my childish nattering dead. I looked longingly at the record player in the corner, and wondered whether she might like to listen to her happy waltzes for a while. Mother said it would be disrespectful to Father to listen to music.

I knew Mother loved me very much, but Father's death changed everything between us. She became irritable and moody, and she always seemed to be hurrying everywhere, with a cross, sour expression on her once-lovely face. I don't think she ever appreciated how much Father had done – as a Muggle, she wasn't able to manage the household with a little flick of the wrist. She found it hard to talk to wizarding families, who treated her with the subdued respect widows always receive, but who gave her confusion over my lycanthropy and the associated forms and Ministry regulations short shrift.

We subsided into a lonely limbo existence, living as poor Muggles, and coping with my monthly transformations with Muggle remedies and brisk words of comfort. Sometimes I missed Father so much I cried myself to sleep with my knees huddled to my chest to press the pain away. My one record lay on my bedside table, and I would gaze at it with longing each night before I went to sleep, and wish Mother would let me play it, just once, to remind me of Father and of better times.

If I'm honest with myself, I was relieved to receive my letter from Hogwarts. I think Mother was, too. She knew I would be well-cared for there, and felt absolved of her guilt for having neglected me in the months following her husband's death.

My few possessions rattled loudly in my trunk as I trundled behind Mother along the platform, an anxious frown on my young face. I passed gaggles of children in long black robes, and noticed their spanking new scarves and expensive pets. I felt my heart sink. They were obviously Hogwarts students, brazenly showing their wizarding colours among the Muggle accountants in business suits and university students with their huge haversacks and battered guitar cases.

'Now, remember what the Headmaster said,' Mother said, crouching down before me and messing distractedly with my collar. I nodded. Dumbledore had visited our house three weeks before, complete with billowing purple robes and avuncular grin, and explained everything. How we would manage my transformations, how to go shopping for everything on the long list of required materials, book and clothes. He called me 'Mr Lupin' with a kind twinkle in his eyes, and patted me gently on the shoulder as I left.

'I can't come onto the platform with you, Remus, because I'm not a witch, you know that,' Mother continued, still fussing over my appearance, rubbing at a smudge on my cheek. 'So you'll have to be a brave boy and ask one of the other children for help getting your trunk onto the train and sitting where you're supposed to.'

I nodded again. I could feel the familiar sting of tears and the painful pressure in the back of my throat, but refused to let my mother see me cry.

She hugged me briefly, and I felt in her embrace every ounce of love she had felt for me in the months since Father died, and hugged her back with every bit of my eleven year old strength. Her eyes were moist as I drew back.

'I'll write to you every week, darling,' she promised. She hadn't called me 'darling' for months. 'You be a good boy now, and stay out of trouble, won't you?' I nodded again and smiled weakly. 'And remember what the Headmaster said, it's very important that nobody else knows about your illness.'

'Yes, Mother.' I wiped at my nose with my sleeve and she frowned, but refrained from reproaching me. The clock high in the smoke and iron gables of the station was dangerously close to eleven o'clock when she finally decided I looked fit to represent the family, and with a final hug, pushed me towards the barrier.

Lily told me later that she had never been more terrified in her life than the moment she walked through the barrier of platform nine and three quarters. _Walking into a brick wall_, she said disparagingly. _I thought I must be mad, even trying it._

I suppose I was lucky. My mother was stranded in the Muggle world, in her best coat, a red scarf at her throat blazing through the smog of the station, waving a little handkerchief. But I had the assurance of my father's ancestry, and the memory of a blue-eyed old man beaming genially at me over the top of his teacup to sustain me as I strode forward.

I thought of my mother and father dancing, swaying gently in the rosy Christmas light, my mother in her stocking feet and my father with his tie loosened. I thought of the swings in the park and my little, high voice, 'Mother, Mother, look how high I'm flying!' and I thought of the biggest treat of all, fish and chips with Father, sitting on a low brick wall behind the church. We'd name the chips and make up little stories about journeys they were going on, wives and children they'd meet there, exotic rainforests they'd walk through, before sending them on their final train ride down our eager gullets.

I felt the reassuring length of my wand in my back pocket, and thought of the cool bitterness of iced tea in the tiny parched square of grass behind our house, and the trembling of my fingers as I opened the parchment envelope, one eye on the majestic owl perched on the tabletop. The girls and boys on the platform were taller than I, and called to each other raucously, darting confidently towards the compartments, but I remembered the blazing pride on my father's face as he handed me that blessed package and pushed through the crowds, smiling a little through my tears.

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AN: cheesy, right? The next instalment is inspired by 'Getting to Know You' and features the Marauders in the early days of their friendship. Come back soon, and I'd appreciate any comments you have on this piece, dd xx 


	2. Getting To Know You

AN: so it's been a while, and other fandoms took hold (damn you, Merlin), but I'm back in the HP fold for the moment, just in time to distract me from revision! Hope you enjoy this latest snippet, any feedback is very welcome.

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_Getting to know you, getting to know all about you_

_Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me – The King and I _

The problem with those first few, riotous weeks at Hogwarts was the pressing knowledge that these were significant times, memories that must at any cost be preserved and cherished for passing down to one's children. I tried frantically to remember first impressions, names, teachers, classrooms, food, feelings, songs, and consequently, with the weight of all these snippets of memory pressing on my brain, forgot everything. My early days at Hogwarts are, by and large, a colourful, noisy blur – understandable, really; it was years ago, and my new life took my breath away.

I do have some unconnected and vivid memories that swirl in my head when I try to recall those first tentative steps into adulthood. My very first taste of sweet potato at the Sorting Feast. Copying my timetable painstakingly onto a sheet of parchment, and taping it neurotically above my bed. The unfamiliar, frightening folds of the hangings around my bed in the dark of night. The inevitably slippery floor of the Potions dungeon which laid me low as I raced for a seat.

I would like dearly to say I remember well the moment I met the boys who would shape my life; but I cannot. Immersed in a sea of confident, mature strangers, I flailed around wildly, hoping to happen upon a friend. Every introduction, which inevitably included the questions 'where do you live?' and 'what team do you follow?', might potentially be the beginning of a lifelong friendship, but I could not remember them all, and I forgot names, and confused surnames, and found myself mired in loneliness by the end of the first week.

But enough melancholy for now – I confess my guilt at age eleven, of believing that I was the only one in the year to be experiencing this bewildering sense of isolation and inferiority. In reality, we were all lost, searching for our own little niche.

We hid it in our different ways. Peter, for instance, would talk very quickly, a seemingly endless flow of verbosity only occasionally blessed by grammar or rationality – a trait which would continue into adulthood, that rambling, nervous speech, punctuated occasionally by a high-pitched giggle. Of course, my retrospective hatred and bitterness makes me a rather harsh, if not openly biased judge, but I remember even in those early days being mildly irritated by his spineless whimpering. Or maybe not. I have forgotten, evidently.

The other two, of course, were different. Just as I was too shy to scrutinize either too closely (and hence even confused their physical appearances to begin with), they were anxious to find out everything about everybody, including, unfortunately, me.

So I came into the dormitory one afternoon to find James and Sirius (who I still thought of as Potter and Black, in that stilted, pompous way that seems to characterize British boarding schools, magical or otherwise) rifling methodically through my things. They were sitting cross-legged on my bed and making neat piles of books, occasionally flicking through one or shaking it to reveal any secret notes or pressed flowers that might be hiding in the spine. They had nearly emptied my trunk, and seemed to have had little success other than to ascertain that I was, indeed, a freaky bookworm with no decent clothes.

'Um…what are you doing?' I imagine, though I confess the memory is a little diluted, that my voice came out tentative rather than annoyed. Knowing how shadowy and nervous I was in those days, I probably thought they'd been instructed to undertake this task by some higher power.

Potter, I think, started and blushed. Black, of course, of _course_, looked me coolly in the eye and said 'looking through your stuff, stupid.'

'Um…why?'

They both looked at each other with a superior glance of omniscience and despair at the ignorance of others, and I thought they could be brothers. When I see that look nowadays, between two fiery-haired mirror-images, it makes me happy, to know that filial bond has survived such years of strife, but back then, with me standing, clutching my satchel protectively, still slightly out of breath from climbing the tower steps, and them lounging on my bed as though they had always been there, I felt very lonely. Desolate, perhaps. And if my first, concrete memory of the men who shaped my life is one of desolation, then it follows that such an emotion has characterized much of the rest of my life, and that _desolate_ is my favourite word in the entire English language.

But there was no inkling of a milestone in Sirius' languid reply, and nonchalant gestures as he continued sorting through photographs, audaciously bored with the detritus of my life.

'Well, we wanted to know a bit more about you, of course.'

He made me feel so small, so idiotic, as though I could find no possible quarrel with his argument, as though I was in some way deficient as to even accuse him of something underhand and untoward. But still I persisted – I was unused to tempests, only child as I was, a docile little boy (my God, I hate that word, _docile_, like an animal), but I knew this was one fight that must be fought.

'But you could have asked me…I'd have told you about myself, you know.'

James snorted, feeding from Sirius' lazy confidence.

'Are you kidding me? You've hardly said a word since we arrived.'

I jutted my chin in what seemed to me a defiant way, but there was no denying the truth of James' words.

'Well, what do you want to know, anyway? My name's Remus John Lupin, I'm eleven years old, I live with my mother in Coventry, I'm allergic to nickel, I'm left handed, my favourite food is fish and chips, I used to iron my socks but I don't anymore, I like neat handwriting and blank paper and Muggle fountain pens, my greatest ambition is to learn how to dance a foxtrot, and I…I…'

I remember with some satisfaction their open mouths and speechless silence. An effect sadly marred by their derisory laughter a moment later.

'Don't _laugh _at me!' I was furious with myself for feeling hot tears prick at the back of my eyes, and furious with them for devaluing my most precious memories.

'Sorry,' Sirius said without a hint of apology. 'You're just so _weird._ I mean, what's this, anyway?'

He was holding up my Rodgers and Hammerstein record, by a finger and a thumb, without reverence. There was a trace of a laugh still dancing about his mouth, and I wanted to hit him.

'Put that down,' I hissed. I think it was then that I saw it for the first time, that perfectly cocked eyebrow, rising unitary into his hairline, accompanied by the customary smirk of supremacy and contempt.

'Ooh, touched a nerve there, Lupin, have we?' He turned it over his hands again and scanned the cover, still grinning skeptically. 'Looks rubbish, anyway. And you haven't even got a player for it…you should get cassettes, nobody listens to vinyl these days, you know.'

James was still stirring piles of my clothes determinedly, as though my secrets would come spilling from the seams like lice from World War trenches. I thought of my father's proud, slightly watery smile as he handed me that package.

'Give me that,' I snapped, lunging over and snatching it from Sirius before he could react. I clutched the record close to my chest and glared at him with as much vehemence as I could muster. My heart was beating perceptibly. 'You,' I said decisively, 'are an arrogant twat, and if you ever touch my stuff again, I'll beat the shit out of you.'

There was silence in the dormitory, in which those forbidden words seemed to reverberate and multiply. James seemed oddly awed, and even Sirius looked, for a brief moment, as though he might have gasped a little. It sounds impressive, I know, the eleven year old waif standing up so mightily to his raven-haired oppressor, but in truth my lips trembled as they formed such awful words, and I thought immediately of my mother and her dreadful rage. I supposed boys didn't talk like that at Hogwarts – I had learned well from the careless types who drifted around the broken swings and concrete skateboard ramps in the city centre.

I would like to say that from then on Sirius and James accepted me as one of their own, looking on me with a sort of veneration and respect the likes of which I had never experienced, and that they accepted my various eccentricities readily and admiringly. Needless to say, that was hardly the case. I was still the nutjob of our dormitory; an aura of mild insanity surrounded me and isolated me as though I smelt faintly of defecation. It was not a pleasant state of affairs.

I remember Harry telling me, not long ago, in truth, about how he and Ron finally became friends with Hermione, how the adrenaline and fear of fighting an enraged troll bound them together suddenly and inseparably. I wish I could say the same of our merry quartet, that there was a definite moment that marked the beginning of our friendship.

Instead, they seemed to gradually accept my presence, to hold their tongues when I was reading at bedtime, to ask if I was coming down to hall for dinner every evening. I soon worked out that they were both innately clever, and that they had very little time for people who, like me, grafted and slaved at their work instead of larking about terrorizing the teachers.

The one advantage of their constant cheeky pranks was the detentions. It didn't take long for the teachers to realize they had a pair of firecrackers on their hands, and to quash their impish urges as emphatically as was possible without resorting to Unforgivable curses. I therefore invariably found myself entertaining one or the other of the immortal duo while the other did something unsavoury involving faeces or blood on the other side of the castle.

I say that – I mean they entertained _me, _sprawled before the fire in the Gryffindor common room, trying to disguise the look of rapture on my baby face. I liked it best when Sirius told me about his childhood. There was such a thrill in hearing about this archaic system, the positively medieval marriage alliances and expectations – I saw ancient money and inbred nobility in the dusty tapestries he described, and saw my pallid, peasant face reflected in the goblin goblets in forgotten corners of his huge house. And in the centre, looking very much the part, Sirius, rebellious, mutinous, magnificent in the face of centuries of pressure.

But my fantasies of Sirius as some forgotten, black-sheep prince are stories for other days. In the first year, and the second too, I was still listening to James' lyrical exultations of various Ravenclaw girls, and wondering what all the fuss was about. I still thought Mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. I suppose I'd wallowed in the beauty of fictional Muggle relationships in the novels and fairy tales of my childhood, but had never thought of them in conjunction with myself. At eleven, I had not learned to yearn for a love to transcend all others. It was, then, the only time in my life that has not been blighted by disappointment.

They were years of companionship, then, gradual and cumulative, and we all realized in turn (with me, of course, leading the way) that we could not envisage life without the others, and all the time I was concealing the biggest truth of my existence, the only detail that defines me wholly.

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The next part features 'My Favourite Things' from 'The Sound of Music' and examines Remus' lycanthropy in greater depth. Come back soon! xx


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